THE HISPANIC AND LATINO IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

                                 

The Hispanics and Latinos Are the Labour Force That Makes America Run

Lately, Latin American immigrants in the United States are facing heightened challenges. Many immigrants have said that recent enforcement drives have made them feel less safe in their own communities, and that they worry a family member or close friend could be deported. This climate has been linked to broader pressures. An advocacy briefing published in March 2026 by the American Friends Service Committee and partners, citing Department of Homeland Security figures, estimated that more than two million foreign nationals had left the US as of 27 October 2025, including approximately 527,000 through enforced removal and 1.6 million through what it described as self-deportation. That estimate has not been published as an official DHS total and should be read as an NGO compilation, not a government statistic. Policy shifts, including changes to humanitarian parole, Temporary Protected Status and eligibility for Affordable Care Act coverage under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, have compounded insecurity.

                                        

The Hispanics or Latinos are the labour force of the United States. You see them everywhere. In shops, on public transport, on construction sites, on farms, in hotels, in warehouses, in kitchens and on the streets delivering food in every weather. They are the people who keep America running. They are the quiet engine behind the noise of the American economy. They are the hands that lift, the hands that carry, the hands that clean, the hands that cook and the hands that build.

Remove them and watch how major sectors that make the United States function are crippled. Shelves go thin because there are fewer people to stack them and to transport goods. Buildings rise more slowly because there are fewer people to lay bricks, to carry cement, to bend steel and to pour concrete. Crops rot in fields because there are fewer people to pick them. Restaurants close early because kitchens have no cooks and no dishwashers. Delivery applications falter because there are fewer riders to move through the city. Offices remain uncleaned. Homes remain unbuilt. The country that calls itself an engine of the world would struggle to keep its own engine running without their hands.

They are the backbone of the food industry in America. They cook in kitchens, they wash dishes till late at night, they serve tables, they prepare meat, they chop vegetables, they clean floors and they deliver food on bicycles and motorbikes through rain and snow and scorching heat. Walk into any restaurant from New York to California, from Texas to Florida, and you will find Latinos behind the heat of the grill. They are in fast food chains and in five star hotels, in taco trucks and in diners that never close. They work long hours without complaint, weekends and nights and holidays while others rest, often without insurance and without job security. Without them, America does not eat out in the way it has become accustomed to.

They are drivers, masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, welders, painters, roofers, gardeners, dog walkers, housekeepers and security guards. Many times I saw them dangling from a high rise while painting or cleaning the outer walls with only a rope to hold them. I saw them swaying in the wind many floors above the street, washing glass that others would not dare to touch. They build the skyline of America while remaining invisible in the story of America.

They brought food varieties that became part of American life. Today American food is unthinkable without Hispanic food. Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tamales, quesadillas, guacamole and salsa are no longer foreign foods. They are American foods. In 1992, sales of salsa surpassed those of ketchup in dollar value, a clear signal of its popularity. That does not mean Americans eat more salsa by volume. Americans still buy more ketchup by weight, about ten billion ounces a year, because a jar of salsa costs more than a bottle of ketchup. But the dollar figure tells the story of cultural transformation. Avocados, chillies, coriander, limes, black beans, corn tortillas and plantains have entered every supermarket. The tortilla has become as American as sliced bread.

They may be from Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay or any country once a Spanish colony. That is why they speak Spanish. That is why they are called Hispanic because of their Spanish linguistic heritage and Latino because of their geographical origin in Latin America. In truth many are both. On official forms you see the combined term Hispanic Latino because language and geography have made them one community in the United States. They are united by language, by history, by faith and by a shared spirit of work.

They are an honest, religious and no nonsense people. They believe in early mornings, hard work, God and keeping their word. They believe that labour has dignity. They do not ask for handouts. They ask only for a fair chance to work and to live with dignity and to be treated with respect. Their churches are full on Sundays. Their homes are full of children, grandparents, uncles and aunts and respect for elders.

Yet many are exploited precisely because they do not have proper stay permission. They are paid less than promised. They are denied overtime, safety equipment, medical benefits and rest. Their vulnerability is used against them by employers who know they cannot complain. Their labour creates enormous profit for others while they themselves live in crowded rooms and save every dollar to send home.

At their heart they love family life, music and their indigenous culture. Family comes first, always. Their music, dance, food and festivals are not hobbies. They are memory. They carry centuries of indigenous and mestizo heritage, the traditions of Aztec, Maya, Inca and many other native peoples mixed with Spanish history.

America was built by immigrants. This is the fundamental truth that must be spoken without fear. Before any immigrant came, this land belonged to the native peoples. They had their own nations, governments, laws, languages and religions. Those native peoples were driven out. Their lands were captured by force and by fraud and by false promises. Their treaties were broken again and again. Their villages were burnt, their children were taken to boarding schools far from home where their hair was cut and their language was forbidden. Their spiritual practices were banned by law. The Trail of Tears where thousands died in forced marches, the massacres at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek, the deliberate destruction of food sources, these are not footnotes. They are the foundation upon which immigrant America was built.

After that destruction, everyone else who came was an immigrant. Some came from England and Spain and France. Some came from Germany and Ireland and Italy and Poland. Some came from Africa in chains and built the wealth of the south with unpaid labour. Some came from China and Japan and Korea. Some came from India and the Philippines and Vietnam. Only the timeline is different. No one except the natives can claim this land as originally theirs.

Therefore the pulling out of Latinos and Hispanics simply because they have no papers carries less logic and less justice. You cannot build a nation with immigrant hands and then declare those hands illegal. You cannot celebrate Ellis Island and the Mayflower while punishing those who cross the Rio Grande with the same dream of work and freedom.

The law must be respected but the law must also be humane and it must be updated to reflect reality. A just society does not use a man for ten years to build its homes and feed its people and then throw him out because he has no paper. It regularises him. It gives him dignity. It understands that labour that is essential must be respected as essential.

If America was built by those who came from elsewhere to work and to build a better life for their children, then Latinos and Hispanics are doing exactly what every generation before them did. They are keeping America working. They are keeping America fed. Protecting them is not charity. It is common sense. It is justice.

( Avtar Mota )

PS

Hispanic refers to language - someone with Spanish-speaking heritage, including Spain but not Brazil, while Latino refers to geography - someone from Latin America, including Portuguese-speaking Brazil but not Spain, so a Mexican is both Hispanic and Latino, a Spaniard is only Hispanic, and a Brazilian is only Latino.

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

INDU MITHA : A TRIBUTE BEYOND BORDERS

                                     

                          ( Indu Mitha with Tehreem Mitha )

Indu Mitha (1929-2026): A Tribute Beyond Borders : An Indian Remembers

“ Dance is a feeling and a beautiful sensation that springs from the soul. Can you stop it ? We danced our way under the shadows of so many threats. We danced with curtains pulled and lights switched off .” ....Indu Mitha 

I was in the United States when she died. The news came late to me. A small message forwarded on WhatsApp. "Indu Mitha passes away in Dublin." I checked the date. 31st August 2026. She had died three days earlier, while visiting her daughter in Ireland, and I had missed it. I searched social media. Nothing. No trending hashtag, no obituary threads, no tribute from cultural ministries, no news channel breaking in. The world that can spend a week mourning a film star paid no tribute to her. That silence itself is a statement about our times.

I know my delay. I know this tribute comes late. But it lurked in my mind even during travel and during my return flight ;  this image of an old woman in Dublin who had once been a young girl in Lahore. So I write this now, under jet lag, as early as I possibly can, because it needs to be done. Some obligations cannot wait for perfect timing.

I write this as an Indian. An Indian paying tribute to a Pakistani dancer who remained culturally Hindu, married to a Muslim general, who dared a military dictator. That sentence alone is why she must be remembered.

She was born Indu Chatterjee in Lahore in 1929, before Lahore became Pakistan. Her father, Gyanesh Chandra Chatterjee, was Professor of Philosophy and President of Government College, Lahore ;  that great institution that produced  eminent men like Allama Iqbal, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, N.M. Rashid, Khushwant Singh, Krishan Chander,  Lala Lajpat Rai, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, Zafarullah Khan, Dev Anand, K.L. Saigal, Pran Nevile,  Nobel Laureates Har Gobind Khorana, and Abdus Salam, and many more.  Her family were Bengali Brahmins who had embraced Christianity some  generations earlier, part of that luminous, much-ignored Bengali  intelligentsia that gave us both rationalism and art. Her elder sister Uma would marry Chetan Anand, the pioneer of Indian cinema. This was not a narrow household. It taught its daughters to think, not to bow.

Partition wrenched her family to Delhi. In that wounded, refugee-filled city, Indu found two destinies. The first was Bharatanatyam. At a time when the dance was being rescued from colonial contempt as mere "nautch", she studied under Vijay Raghava Rao and Shrimati Lalita, and then travelled to Madras to sit at the feet of Rukmini Devi Arundale at Kalakshetra. Rukmini had given back to Bharatanatyam its sanctity as a temple art. Indu understood that profoundly. For her, it was never entertainment. It was Sadhana ,  the Bhagavad Gita in movement, with hastas and abhinaya and aramandi as its grammar.

The second destiny was a man. Captain Aboobaker Osman Mitha. AO. , a tall, handsome Memon from Malabar Hill, Bombay, from one of the most affluent trading families of British India. A graduate of the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, who had opted for Pakistan. Muslim. Reserved. His later motto to the SSG, which he founded, would be "Be proud of your poverty."

They fell in love in Delhi. In 1947, that love became illegal by geography. The border was drawn in blood to ensure such loves would not happen.She was a postgraduate in philosophy from Delhi university.

What Indu did in 1951 is one of the greatest love affairs in the modern history of the subcontinent, and we do not teach it. Against fierce opposition from her Bengali family, twenty-two years old, she boarded a train alone, crossed the newly hostile border, arrived in Karachi, and married him. She did not cross as a refugee. She crossed as a lover. She left India for Pakistan not for ideology, but for a man.

Indu is great granddaughter of the priest of Kalibari temple of Kolkata who converted to Christianity .She did MA (philosophy) from Delhi university in 1951, and taught at the Government College for Women, Rawalpindi after moving to Pakistan.

And this is the scholarly crux : she did not convert. She was a Bengali Christian of Brahmin heritage who married a Gujarati Memon Muslim and remained culturally Hindu. Her nikah was performed, but her soul was not bartered. Her art remained Hindu. Her repertoire remained Krishna and Shiva, in Sanskrit, with the bindi, the temple jewellery, the Kanjeevaram sari and the ghungroo. In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as the wife of a rising general, she lived openly as a Hindu cultural practitioner. Her house was a paradox: his Pakistan of discipline and duty, hers of art and devotion. They made it one house.

She followed him to every cantonment : Quetta, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Cherat , and everywhere she taught, gratis. Not for money. For duty. Over 2,000 students over six decades, from daughters of prominent Shia families of Lahore to girls and boys from the katchi abadis of Islamabad. She believed dance was a gift.

Then history punished them both.

Major General Mitha, the founder of the Special Service Group, the man who commanded the Pakistan Military Academy and who held the Hilal-i-Jurat for East Pakistan, was made a scapegoat for 1971. He was never court-martialled. He was never given a field general court martial to defend himself. His retirement was announced on national television. His medals were stripped, his pension withheld for seven years, his home placed under surveillance throughout the Bhutto years. From legend to pariah overnight. A friend who visited him in his enforced retirement near Islamabad wrote, "At the end of a tumultuous life, all he wanted was a room to sleep in, one to write and eat in — a space to walk, reflect and gaze across the fields to the distant hills." He died in December 1999, managing a friend's farm to survive. Islamabad's elite, which had once courted the glamorous Mithas, vanished.

Indu stayed. Her dance became their dignity, their resistance, their income.

Then came 1977. General Zia-ul-Haq seized power. The Hudood Ordinances of 1979 came into force. The Zina Ordinance, the Law of Evidence, the Qisas and Diyat laws — women became half-witnesses, dance was declared vulgar and un-Islamic, music was banned from PTV, female performers were pushed off stage. Bharatanatyam, a Hindu temple dance performed in Sanskrit, was, in the eyes of the state, obscene, Indian, and blasphemous.

Every other dancer stopped, fled, or rebranded her work as "aesthetic movement" or "physical exercise." Indu Mitha dared Zia-ul-Haq.

In a small living room in Rawalpindi, while Zia's morality police enforced his Nizam-e-Mustafa outside, a sixty-year-old woman tied her bells and taught Bharatanatyam. She called it Bharatanatyam. She did not hide it. She taught the shlokas, then quietly asked friends to translate them into Urdu so her Muslim students would know they were stories of love, not idolatry. To teach Bharatanatyam in Pakistan when Islamic laws were fully operational, when public flogging was a reality, was not art. It was civil disobedience. It was courage of a kind we rarely see. Zia had tanks and jails. She had bells. The bells won.

This is where her daughter, Tehreema Mitha, completes the circle and gives this tribute its "beyond borders" meaning.

Tehreema was her first disciple, her child and her shishya, born of a Muslim father and a Christian-Hindu mother, embodying in one body the composite culture of undivided India. Indu trained her in the Vazhuvoor bani with uncompromising rigour. Only five students in her entire life ever completed their arangetram, because Indu was a purist. Tehreema was one of them.

But Indu knew Pakistan under Zia could not give her daughter the depth she needed. So she made the same painful decision her parents had once feared , she sent her child across the border. Tehreema went to India in the 1980s , the decade of Siachen, of Brasstacks, of the most hostile India-Pakistan years , on a Pakistani passport, daughter of a disgraced Pakistani general, to learn a Hindu dance at its source. She trained in Chennai and Delhi with gurus who remembered her mother as a young girl. India welcomed her without a question. No visa officer could understand that this was not a Pakistani coming to India, but a granddaughter coming home to her art.

Tehreema later moved to the United States and founded the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company in Washington, D.C. There, she became the diaspora keeper of her mother's legacy, creating works about Partition, about exile, about being Muslim and Hindu in one breath. She dances today as Pakistani, Indian, American, Memon, Brahmin, Christian , all at once. In Tehreema, her mother's impossible marriage still dances.

I quote from Maneesha Tikekar’s book “ An Indian’s Sojourn in Pakistan .. Across The Wagah Border “

“One day I saw Indu Ji’s disciples performing at Islamabad Club auditorium.The small auditorium was jam packed . Late comers had no place to enter .It appeared that entire elite of islamabad were at the auditorium.Fashionable women had found a rare opportunity to air their Sarees. Indu Ji’s disciples performed pure dance forms like Allaripu , Jatiswaram, Tilaba and Varanam. The whole ambience was dance and music .I too wondered if I were inside Shanmukhnanad Hall Mumbai or at Islamabad . It was a unique opportunity to witness Arangretam in Pakistan.I felt surprised that they did not make mention of Krishna by name instead they mentioned Maakhan Chor . According to Indu ji , she has to make hundreds of compromises to keep Bharatnatyam alive in Pakistan.This is true. Though public dance performances are not banned currently in Pakistan, it is a challenge to keep dance alive. For this Sheema Kirmani uses Urdu , Persian and English poetry in her Odissi performances .She also uses Sufi poetry for Geet Govindam and Radha Krishna .”

That is why, as an Indian, I am sad. This sadness that comes when we realise we have lost a proof. Political science tells us Partition created two exclusive identities. Indu Mitha's life disproves it empirically. She was legally Pakistani, culturally Hindu, married to the founder of Pakistan's commandos, teaching Hindu temple dance to Muslim girls under an Islamist dictator, whose daughter trained in India and flourishes in America. What model of nationalism explains her? None. Only love and passion does.

She chose love twice. In 1951, when she chose AO over country. And in 1977, when she chose dance over safety. The first cost her family. The second could have cost her freedom. She never regretted either.

In the British tradition, we speak of the examined life. Hers was the examined life in movement. She taught us ,Indians and Pakistanis alike , that a foot stamping in devotion needs no visa, and a hand forming a mudra needs no passport.

Social media may have paid no tribute. The news may have come late to me in America. I may be writing this under jet lag, in a rush, with tired eyes. But I write it because some people must be remembered, not for their country, but for their defiance of the very idea that art needs a country.

This last line I dedicate to you, Indu Mitha: Guru, lover, rebel, Indian at heart, Pakistani by fate, dancer beyond borders.

"You danced when it was forbidden to dance. Rest in dance.Rest in peace."

(Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA

                                       

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA: A COMPLETE PROFILE

South Africa lies at the southern tip of the African continent, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet near Cape Agulhas. It is the twenty-fourth largest country in the world, with an area of about 1.2 million square kilometres. It has six neighbouring countries: Namibia to the northwest, Botswana and Zimbabwe to the north, and Mozambique and Eswatini to the east. It also completely surrounds the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho.

South Africa has three capitals. Pretoria is the administrative capital, Cape Town the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein the judicial capital. Johannesburg is the largest city and the country’s principal economic and financial centre.

For Indians, however, the most important city is Durban, situated on the east coast in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban has one of the largest concentrations of people of Indian origin outside India and has long been a major centre of Indian commercial, cultural, religious and social life in South Africa. The Indian population is particularly concentrated in and around Durban, including areas such as Chatsworth, Phoenix, Verulam, Tongaat and Isipingo, where people of Indian origin have played a prominent role in the development of local society.

CLIMATE

South Africa’s climate is as diverse as India’s, although it is generally drier and sunnier. The Durban and KwaZulu-Natal coast, where a large proportion of South Africa’s Indian population lives, has a humid subtropical climate broadly comparable to that of Chennai or Mumbai. Summer extends from November to February, with temperatures generally ranging from 28 to 33 degrees Celsius and accompanied by substantial rainfall. Winters are mild, with daytime temperatures usually between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius.

Sugarcane grows particularly well in this warm and humid region, which was one of the reasons indentured Indian labourers were brought to Natal during the nineteenth century to work on sugar plantations. The climate was suitable for cane cultivation and was familiar to many migrants from the warmer agricultural regions of India.

The Gauteng Highveld, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are situated and where a significant Indian population also lives, has a temperate high altitude climate at around 1,500 metres above sea level. It may be compared broadly with Bengaluru. Summers are pleasant, with daytime temperatures of about 26 degrees Celsius, while winters are cold and dry, with morning frost common and temperatures ranging roughly from 4 to 15 degrees Celsius.

The Western Cape, including Cape Town, has a Mediterranean climate, characterised by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. The interior Karoo is much drier and is largely semi-desert. South Africa as a whole enjoys abundant sunshine, receiving more than 2,500 hours of sunshine annually in many areas.

WHEN DID INDIANS ARRIVE

( Old photos of Indians in South Africa)

There were two distinct waves.

Wave one was indentured labour from eighteen sixty to nineteen eleven. After slavery was abolished in the British Empire in eighteen thirty-four, sugar planters in Natal Colony needed cheap labour. On sixteenth November eighteen sixty, the sailing ship Truro arrived in Durban harbour from Madras with three hundred forty-two Indians. Then the SS Belvedere from Calcutta. Over fifty-one years, one hundred fifty-two thousand one hundred eighty-four indentured Indians arrived in three hundred eighty-four ships. Sixty per cent came from Madras Presidency, Tamil and Telugu-speaking villages, twenty-five per cent from Bihar, United Provinces, Bengal, Bhojpuri- and Awadhi-speaking; fifteen per cent from Bombay and Gujarat. They signed a five-year contract, paid ten shillings a month, lived in barracks, and were called Coolies. About twenty-five per cent went back to India, but seventy-five per cent stayed, took a small plot of land in Inanda, Clairwood, or became market gardeners and hawkers. Indenture was stopped in nineteen eleven due to Gandhi's agitation.

Wave two was Passenger Indians from the eighteen seventies onwards. These were free Indians, not indentured labourers. First was Abubaker Amod Jhaveri, a Memon trader from Porbandar in eighteen seventy-five, who followed his indentured workers to sell them halal food and clothes. Then came Gujarati Hindu Bhatias, Patels, and Uttar Pradesh Sunni Bohras. They paid their own passenger fare, hence called Passenger Indians. They were literate and had capital. They opened shops on Grey Street, now called Dr Yusuf Dadoo Street in Durban. After nineteen ninety four, the third wave arrived: thirty thousand plus new Indian professionals, doctors, information technology specialists, professors, direct from India on work visas. They are called India Indians versus South African Indians.

ROUTES

The indenture route was Kolkata or Madras across the Indian Ocean via Mauritius to Durban. The voyage took forty-five to sixty days, with mortality of two to three per cent. Ships were Truro, Belvedere, Umtata, Congella and others. The passenger route was Porbandar or Bombay to Aden to Zanzibar to Durban by steamer. Traders would bring whole joint families, unlike indenture, which was single-male majority.

POPULATION BREAKUP

South Africa’s Indian population is strongly concentrated in a few urban regions, above all in KwaZulu-Natal. Census 2022 recorded about 1.70 million people in the official Indian or Asian category, of whom approximately 1.16 million lived in KwaZulu-Natal and about 330,000 in Gauteng. Durban and the wider eThekwini region remain the historic and cultural heart of Indian South Africa, reflecting the arrival of indentured Indian labourers in Natal from 1860 and the subsequent settlement of traders, artisans and professionals. Large Indian communities are found in Durban suburbs and surrounding areas such as Chatsworth, Phoenix, Tongaat, Verulam and Umhlanga, while Pietermaritzburg is another important centre. Gauteng has the second largest concentration, particularly in Johannesburg, Lenasia, Pretoria and adjoining urban areas, where Indian settlement expanded through commerce, professional employment and later internal migration. The Western Cape has a smaller but significant Indian and Asian population of about 84,000, concentrated principally in Cape Town, while smaller communities live in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the Free State, Northern Cape and North West.

Religiously, South African Indians are remarkably diverse. Census 2022 shows that within the wider Indian or Asian category, about 37.9 per cent identified with Hinduism, 33.6 per cent with Christianity, and 24.5 per cent with Islam, with much smaller numbers identifying with Buddhism, Judaism, other beliefs, or no religious affiliation. Hindu religious and cultural life is particularly visible in Durban and its surrounding Indian settlements, where numerous temples, festivals and cultural organisations preserve traditions associated with ancestors who came largely from India. Muslims of Indian origin also form an important part of the communities of Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. In contrast, a substantial section of South Africans of Indian ancestry are Christian. Thus, although Durban remains the principal centre of Indian civilisation and heritage in South Africa, Johannesburg and Lenasia have developed into major centres of Indian commercial, religious and cultural life, with smaller but established communities extending across the country.

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

                                        

                                              ( A Hindu Temple in South Africa)

Around half of the Indian community are Hindus, divided into several traditions. The Tamil group, the largest, maintains Mariamman temples; North Indians uphold Sanatan Dharma with shrines dedicated to the Ramayana; while Telugu and Gujarati devotees sustain Swaminarayan centres. Many temples are served by Brahmin priests, and numerous institutions fall under the authority of the Sanatan Dharma Sabha.

Approximately twenty‑two per cent are Muslims, predominantly Gujarati Memon and Surti Sunni, with a smaller number of North Indian Pathans. This community is notably affluent, long associated with control of the textile trade. Their mosques on Grey Street, some dating back 140 years, remain enduring landmarks.

About fifteen per cent are Christians. Many among the indentured labourers converted during apartheid, seeking access to education through missionary schools. Smaller groups include Sikhs, Parsis, and Jains, each contributing to the plural religious fabric.

During apartheid, when Indian political activity was prohibited, temples and mosques became vital centres of organisation, blending spiritual devotion with resistance and community solidarity.

FESTIVALS

Diwali is the biggest public festival in Durban. The Durban Diwali Festival at the Old Fort and along the Golden Mile attracts over two hundred thousand people of all races. Homes in Chatsworth and Phoenix light oil lamps, share mithai and set off fireworks.

Eid is central for the Muslim Indian community. There are two major Eids. Eid ul Fitr after Ramadan is the festival of breaking fast. It is celebrated after thirty days of fasting. On this day, the Jumuah Masjid in Durban, built in eighteen eighty one, holds special prayers with over six thousand people. Families wear new clothes, give Zakat to the poor and cook biryani, haleem and seviyan. Eid ul Adha is the festival of sacrifice in memory of Prophet Ibrahim. The ritual of Qurbani is done, and meat is distributed to the poor and neighbours of all religions.

Holi or Phag is celebrated as the festival of colours, especially by North Indians from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh heritage. In Durban and Johannesburg, temples like the Sri Radha Gopinath Temple organise Holi with dry colour, water and bhajans. It falls during South Africa's autumn in March, but youth have revived it.

Maha Shivratri is the great night of Shiva and is very important for Tamil and Hindi communities. Devotees fast all day and stay awake all night chanting Om Namah Shivaya. The main centres are the Clairwood Shree Siva Soobramoniar Temple in Durban and the Melrose Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Johannesburg. People carry milk, water and bilva leaves to pour on the lingam.

Ram Navmi is the birth of Lord Rama and is perhaps the most emotional festival for North Indian Sanatan Dharma families because the Ramayana is their bible. For nine days, Ramayana recitals happen in Hindi and in English in homes and temples. On Ram Navmi day, temples in Durban North, Pietermaritzburg and Lenasia stage flag hoisting and distribute panakam and sweet rice. The Ramayana Centre in Chatsworth was built to preserve this tradition.

Other major festivals include Pongal, Kavadi or Thaipusam, Navratri and Garba, and Krishna Janmashtami.

 ARYA SAMAJ

Arya Samaj was founded in South Africa in nineteen zero eight in Durban by Bhawani Dayal Sannyasi, who had come from India. He started the first Arya Samaj in Durban to reform Hinduism among Hindi-speaking North Indians. The core teachings are belief in one formless God, rejection of idol worship, rejection of caste by birth, support for widow remarriage, support for Vedic education and the Hindi language, and performance of hawan fire prayer instead of idol puja. In South Africa, it remained a minority, about ten to fifteen per cent of North Indian Hindus. Still, Arya Samaj's contribution is significant. They run Arya Samaj schools in Durban and Johannesburg, like Arya Samaj School in Chatsworth. They run Hindi classes, they conduct mass hawan, they conduct funerals without a Brahmin priest, they promote Vedic marriages where the bride and groom chant mantras themselves. They also run the Veda Niketan and Dayanand Home for orphans.

RAM LEELA

Ram Leela is very much alive in South Africa. Ram Leela was brought by Bihari and Uttar Pradesh indentured labourers who knew the Tulsidas Ramcharitmanas by heart. There are two forms. The first is Ramayana Satsang, which is nonstop reading. For nine days before Ram Navmi and Dussehra, groups read the entire Ramcharitmanas in temples. The second is Natak Ram Leela, which is a drama with costumes. This is performed in Durban, Chatsworth, Verulam, Phoenix, Lenasia and Cape Town. The biggest Ram Leela is in Durban. Shree Ramayana Sabha of South Africa organises Ram Leela every year at the Chatsworth Stadium and at the Durban Exhibition Centre during Navratri and Dussehra. In Verulam, Ram Leela is performed on open ground for ten nights, ending with Ravan Dahan, the burning of the effigy of Ravana. This attracts over ten thousand people. Today, the Ramayana Centre in Chatsworth, founded by Pandit Sahadeo Maharaj, is the world-famous centre for Ram Leela study.

 SIKHS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Sikhs in South Africa are a very small and very new community of about thirteen thousand people, which is less than one per cent of the Indian community. Unlike Tamil and Gujarati Indians who came in eighteen sixty as indentured labourers and traders, Sikhs were not present during apartheid because immigration from India was banned from nineteen forty eight to nineteen ninety four. The community comprises exclusively Indian expatriates who arrived after nineteen ninety four. The first full-fledged Gurdwara was built only in two thousand fifteen in Sandton, Johannesburg, after an eight-year legal battle with white neighbours who objected to its domes. It is two thousand five hundred square metres and was opened by Minister Maite Mashabane Nkoane as a symbol that God is for the rich and the poor. There are now Gurdwaras in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. They hold Sunday divan, Punjabi classes, Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan and daily langar open to all races. Many local South Africans come to do seva. Sikhs are known for enterprise and work mainly in transport, logistics, hardware and hotels and are respected for community service like blanket and food distribution.

 CULTURAL CONTINUITY

Continuity is strong. The joint family system survives in KwaZulu-Natal business families; arranged marriages still account for sixty per cent in the Gujarati community, but love marriages are rising; vegetarianism is high, with Durban having the largest number of vegetarian restaurants in Africa. Bollywood, Indian Premier League cricket and Zee Television have a strong are maintaining links. Cricket hero Hashim Amla fasting in Ramadan was national pride. Cuisine includes bunny chow, hollowed bread filled with curry, invented by Indians to carry lunch to the fields and now a national South African dish. Samosa, Biryani, and Roti are mainstream South African foods.

 TOURISM

Two-way tourism exists. Indians visiting South Africa are one hundred thousand plus annually from India. They come for the Gandhi Trail, which includes Pietermaritzburg Station, where Gandhi was thrown off in eighteen ninety three, Phoenix Settlement in Inanda, which is Gandhi Ashram, Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg, and Constitution Hill. They also come for Indian markets like Victoria Street Market in Durban and Oriental Plaza in Johannesburg, plus Kruger and Cape Town and the Garden Route. South Africans visiting India include many South African Indians who go for roots, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Bihar ancestral villages, Char Dham pilgrimage.

 GANDHI VISIT

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a twenty-four-year-old barrister from Porbandar, arrived in Durban in May eighteen ninety three to work for Dada Abdulla, a Gujarati trader. On seventh June eighteen ninety three, in a first-class compartment from Durban to Pretoria, he was thrown off at Pietermaritzburg for being coloured in a white compartment. He shivered the whole night in the waiting room. He later wrote my active non-violence began that night. He stayed till nineteen fourteen. In South Africa, he founded the Natal Indian Congress in eighteen ninety four, the first Indian political party outside India, now one hundred thirty years old. He started the newspaper Indian Opinion in nineteen zero three in four languages. He founded Phoenix Settlement near Durban in nineteen zero four, an experimental ashram where he first practised simple living and bread labour. He founded Tolstoy Farm in nineteen ten near Johannesburg, a satyagraha training camp. He led his first Satyagraha in nineteen zero six against the Asiatic Registration Act, called Black Act, requiring fingerprinting of Indians; he burned passes and went to jail four times. He led nineteen thirteen march of two thousand Indian women against the marriage law, his first women led march. He was jailed in Old Fort Prison, Johannesburg. South Africa was his laboratory. He left in January nineteen fifteen for India as Mahatma.

 MANDELA AND INDIANS

Nelson Mandela's relationship with Indians was brotherhood forged in prison. During apartheid from nineteen forty-eight to nineteen ninety four, Indians were classified as Asian, could not vote, could not own land in white areas, could not marry whites, forced to relocate under the Group Areas Act; Lenasia near Johannesburg and Chatsworth near Durban were Indian ghettos created by law. Indians joined the African National Congress early. Key figures include Dr Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker, who led nineteen forty six Passive Resistance Campaign, the same Gandhian satyagraha. Ahmed Kathrada, Gujarati born, jailed with Mandela for twenty-six years on Robben Island after Rivonia Trial in nineteen sixty-four. Mandela's closest confidant. Fatima Meer, Tamil Indian activist, banned person. Billy Nair, Pravin Gordhan, trade unionists. Mandela, after his release in nineteen ninety, first went to Indian areas to thank. He said Indians, Coloureds and Africans were all oppressed; our struggle is one. Post nineteen ninety four democracy, Indians flourished; Pravin Gordhan became Finance Minister twice, Ebrahim Patel, Minister of Trade, Naledi Pandor, of Indian Muslim father, Foreign Minister.

 CONTRIBUTION OF INDIANS

Indians built the Natal sugar industry, which is still sixty per cent of South Africa's sugar. They built railways from Durban to Johannesburg. Created retail network; Grey Street, Durban, was one hundred per cent Indian shops. Today, Durban's small business is seventy percent Indian owned. Agriculture includes market gardening; Indians introduced mango, coriander, brinjal, and chilli to South Africa. Clairwood and Verulam were vegetable baskets. Education-wise, during apartheid, when the government refused to build Indian schools, Indians built their own: Mahatma Gandhi schools, Sastri College, the first Indian college. Literacy among Indians ninety eight percent, the highest of all groups. Healthcare-wise, built clinics, led anti-tuberculosis movement. Struggle-wise, sacrificed for democracy.

 NOTABLE INDIANS

Ahmed Kathrada, Rivonia Trialist; Yusuf Dadoo, Fatima Meer author; Pravin Gordhan, nineteen forty nine to twenty twenty four Finance Minister who stopped state capture; Ebrahim Patel, Minister; Navi Pillay, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Hashim Amla first Indian to captain South Africa with fifty five centuries, Keshav Maharaj spinner South Africa cricket, Ravi Naidoo founder of Design Indaba.

INDIANS IN TRADE AND COMMERCE

Trade is where Indians dominate disproportionately. Gujarati Passenger Indians were called Arab traders by whites and hated for competition. They controlled eighty per cent of retail in Natal by nineteen ten, leading to anti Indian laws. Today Grey Street in Durban, Oriental Plaza in Johannesburg, Fordsburg and Lenasia are wholesale hubs for textiles, spices, jewellery, hardware and electronics. Gujarati families like Jhaveri and Moosa own listed companies. New professionals run information technology firms, private hospitals and law firms. Shops like Lala Store menswear with a lotus logo are classic Passenger Indian businesses, suits and formal wear for weddings. The lotus is used because it stands for Lakshmi and prosperity. South African Indians were brought as labour but became builders of the nation.

( Avtar Mota ) 

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